The Rajoelina administration is clearing the runway for the electoral process

It took a couple of days to debate the three themes supposed to transform the electoral process in Madagascar. The national electoral task meeting addressed the electoral code’s improvement, the next legislative election’s structural law, and finally the setting up of the independent electoral national Commission or CENI. Some commissions have identified the necessary changes meant to pledge free, fair and transparent elections. The stake is simple for the transitional authorities: make up credibility for the first vote that should deserve the international recognition. 

The Rajoelina administration is playing its lonesome cowboy while preparing the elections. It could nevertheless reckon with the presence of a couple of political figures more than ever interested by the elections. Pierrot Rajaonarivelo has long considered elections as the best solution to end the crisis in the country. While openly displaying his presidential ambition, the former national Secretary of the Arema party suggested some conditions to be respected for the sake of free and fair elections. As an example, Didier Ratsiraka’s former man recommended that the administration had to be cast aside from the electoral process meant to be fully controlled by the CENI. 

The struggle against fraud is an everlasting obsession for candidates. The empowered party is generally being accused of massive fraud, even though no one ever proved any large scale voters’ choice manipulation. As far as the constitutional expert Honore Rakotomanana is concerned, the renewal of the electoral code is paramount. “A better implementation or the law must be thought up; if the High Constitutional Court has to judge on electoral frauds, legal sanctions have to follow suit “. Can the CENI “judge” an election or should it only organize it? 

The HAT’s position is controversial: it is willing to push for the immediate erection of the CENI, but also anxious to keep in full control of the whole electoral process. The results of the two days long task meeting might, somehow, well be contradictory. A new electoral code defining the general framework, the forthcoming vote’s structural law, and a CENI with a very far reaching mission and short range capacities, might, in the end, prove to be more confusing than the previous one. And the law political on parties, altered shortly before the political crisis, does certainly not help. 

The promoter is, at any rate, appearing satisfied with so many animated far reaching debates. “The task meeting was, technically speaking, satisfactory”, Summed up General Raveloharison. Together with the setting up of the CENI, the constitution of a new electoral file, the communal treatment of the electoral list with more efficiency, the regulation of the election campaign and the adoption of the single ballot have all been addressed. Any possible candidate has to be aged between 21 and 65 years. The task meeting’s participants have not yet addressed the presidential minimal age’s lowering to far below 40 years old – as a gift for the young Andry Rajoelina. It is, besides, not yet necessary since the young kid will, previously, have to tackle the Republic’s Constitution’s tuning to measure.